


my heartly service

by pelican_in_its_piety



Category: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Genre: Multi, a wee bit of fealty kink, kiss exchange carried to its logical conclusion, sameflash treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-27
Updated: 2020-08-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:00:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26146018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pelican_in_its_piety/pseuds/pelican_in_its_piety
Summary: The kiss exchange, just a little more honest
Relationships: Gawain/Bertilak de Hautdesert, Lady Bertilak/Gawain, Lady Bertilak/Gawain/Bertilak de Hautdesert
Comments: 6
Kudos: 21
Collections: Short August Medieval Exchange 2020





	my heartly service

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thatgothlibrarian](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatgothlibrarian/gifts).



One. Slow, courtly, claustrophobic, the way a formal dance leaves you no options. When a lord, on whose hospitality you are depending, invites you to play a game, you cannot refuse without causing offence. There are ways to break away, surely, but they involve wandering in the cold again, and even that is preferable to the disgrace when you return to court, having shamed Arthur.

When Lord Bertilak comes to him it is stately, both hands outstretched bearing a fox as red as the glimpse of hair at the neck of his sweat-dark jerkin. That is clearly not how he was as he killed the fox, and Gawain wants to see his bloodlust but more than that is relieved he does not need to show how he was when he received the kiss he gives in exchange.

Two. Gawain likes to think he is brave, but it is a courage enforced and bound. It is the courage to do what he must in order not to disgrace Arthur. The courage to take what he wants is very different, so he pushes Lady Bertilak away, though when she grips his cock through his nightshirt he wants to just push into the hollow of her. She is sitting on him, her cunt right over his cock with only the nightshirt to prevent him from sliding inside. When she tries to push his nightshirt up and he holds it down, she fits herself over him anyway, and takes his head inside her, linen be damned. The friction is almost too much for both of them. It feels like his cockhead will be rubbed raw, but the linen is soaked in her, and he knows he could shove her off and run. Duty to a lady, he says to himself, if I throw her it will be a violation. But he cannot bring himself to make the effort.

Soon enough he is about to violate her in the other way. He must have whimpered something, because she takes his jaw and turns his face to look at her while she climbs off his cock, wincing a little. “Now finish yourself,” she says. How does she know? How does she know what men do to themselves? But why is he surprised – of course she, she of the luxurious thighs and small breasts, she of the maddening, painful rush towards pleasure, knows. So he lifts his nightshirt at last, and closes his hand around his cock, angry red, sticky with her. It does not take long, and the whole time her keen eyes are fixed on him he is thinking about the inevitable. She slips away while he is still lying there, stunned. He barely wonders how she dares to walk the halls naked.

He never doubts he will keep his bargain. When Lord Bertilak strides towards him, shucking off layers of furs covered with melting snow, he only turns aside and murmurs that maybe his gift is best given in private. “That is just as well,” Sir Bertilak booms, “because you will have to come outside to receive your boar. He is on his way to the kitchens for tomorrow, you understand.”

They stand there in the snow by the stables, looking at the boar’s ripped open belly, the trickle of blood coming out one nostril. For a moment, Gawain thinks perhaps he should admit his errand to Bertilak; maybe it would be honourable to tell his host what he is going to do two days hence. But then again, it is an imposition, because Bertilak would feel compelled to save him, or at least worry over him, or counsel him. And in some obscure way, he feels that his gratitude as a guest is cleaner without this, that perhaps for one more day he can merely be Bertilak’s knight. Instead he says, “Stronger than a boar, my lord.” And he does not know how to go on.

“You found something too,” says Bertilak, and Gawain replies, “Do you want the whole of it?”

“Oh ho ho.”

Gawain is red. Bertilak has not treated their game as a jest before now, but deadly serious. He could just give two kisses and be done with it, if Bertilak will mock him. His debt does not extend that far. But it does. So he reaches up and kisses Lord Bertilak on the lips, opening his mouth just a little to the thickness of Bertilak’s lower lip. Bertilak’s beard surrounds his face, and his great hands come up to Gawain’s hips.

“Oh?”

Gawain goes on, trying not to think, rubbing against Bertilak. His cock has been half hard since Bertilak led him outside, and now, with Bertilak holding him in place, with the friction, with the almost-sure knowledge that he will get what he has desired but has been too cowardly to ask for, it strains against his hose. He wishes for the lady’s wet body, even for the rough slide of the linen between them.

“Would you like me here?” he manages.

“Well, where did you find – this?” says Bertilak with a sharp grab for his cock. Gawain yelps and the rest of his body goes limp in Bertilak’s grip, cock straining.

“Do you want to know?”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“In my bed, lord.”

“Then take me there.”

So he does, by back stairwells, and no one sees.

With the door closed, Gawain asks, “Which part do you take, my lord?”

“Oh, you will take my lady’s. Now show me exactly how it was.”

“You knew?”

“Yes. Show me now.”

“Oh. Oh.” And Gawain is lying face down on the bed, Lord Bertilak stroking his cock and his taint.

“Alright, roll over.” Gawain does, and watches Lord Bertilak strip, slowly, shedding his gown, unlacing his hose. “Were you above her?” Gawain shakes his head, mouth dry, agonizingly hard.

But Bertilak climbs atop him anyways, stretching his arsehole and rubbing against Gawain. He is as impassive as wood, as stone, except for a kind of subtle triumph in his face. When he sinks down on Gawain’s prick it is a conquest. Bertilak is being fucked, but Gawain is wholly at his mercy, pinned under his bulk, his big belly with its soft red hair, his enormous hands.

Three. Gawain wakes with a knife to his throat. “You have given this already,” says the lady. “So kindly don’t pass this on to my lord. Now hold still.” And she takes the knife from him for a moment to bind a green belt tightly around his prick and balls. “I know what you’ve been up to,” she says, “showing my lord what I’ve been giving you. But not this. It will save your life, but only if you keep it. You understand?”

“You did not give me everything my lady gave you,” says Bertilak, and Gawain presses his hand to the stinging cut on his neck. He is alive, he is bleeding, everything is alive, the forest itself, the moss on the hills, whatever green-spirit Lord Bertilak is.

Bolder this afternoon than yesterday, he says, “You are free to take it from my body, lord.” Snow plops from slimy black branches. Bertilak’s red beard and green armour blaze out like the holly and the ivy. Gawain’s blood is as red as the holly-berry against the snow.

And so they do. Back to Hautdesert, back from the fear of the unknown wild, back from certain death. They ride quietly, because there have been betrayals on both sides. Gawain is honourable, but he is not stupid; to offer hospitality and refuge before threatening to kill him is far worse than concealing a love token. And Gawin can feel his cock throbbing in the grip of that love token when he thinks about how he and Lord Bertilak will reconcile.


End file.
